I’m still waiting on my existing number to be transferred from Comcast to Vonage (letter was sent to comcast on June 12, says Vonage). Last Friday I had Comcast calling Vonage on three-way calling. The Comcast rep was so polite and doing everything possible to help me out. Vonage on the other hand was clueless. I talked to over 5 representatives at Vonage. The first two just moved us around. The third one was from India. I asked him where this call is being answered. He paused and said “SoPaul, India” (some city). He gave us a number to try and when the Comcast rep asked to transfer us so we wouldn’t get disconnect he said he couldn’t. Then we said good bye and started to plan how to call the new number without being disconnected. A noise in the background led us to believe the India person was still on the line. “Vonage! Are you still there?” I asked. …sorry I’m still laughing typing this. He pauses and says “…um yeah. I can’t hang up. You have too!”. Me and Comcast (Linda). Okay I have her name by now. Linda and I start laughing. He laugh was if were not laughing at him, but with him. I explain we need him to hang up since he couldn’t transfer us. He had to get a supervisor to transfer us to him and disconnect. The 4th rep switched us the the 5th rep. This rep had an attitude. The Vonage Rep, Luwonda, never directed anything to Comcast only to me. When Linda told her that Comcast has no record Vonage’s request for my transfer was sent Luwonda asked me to hold. After 15mins with no responds Linda and started talking. I asked where she was from, she paused and said I’m not suppose to say. I said well with that said I guess your not from the states either. I said, I bet Canada! I guessed right. Right by Nova Scotia. Now Vonage comes back and says, hey we sent it. I’ll have someone open a priority ticket. You will receive an email on Monday with the tentative date. After Vonage leaves, Linda stays on the line and apologies for my problems.

So far I’ve had poor support from Vonage. The Vonage equipment and quality are good (the little I’ve used). I truly don’t think I’ll stay with Vonage and here is why. I thought Vonage was one of the better Voip providers.

A normal Cable connections has about 256-300k upload. A Voip requires about 100-120k for a quality connection. If you subtract that from the 256 (low end) you now only have about 156k upload. For me, 156k upload is not going to cut it. I’ve got a teenager that has AOL Instant Messenger and other programs that I’m sure pull from this upload. I my self will take away from this. Think about it. Xfire uses about 15-20k, TS uses about 10-20k and games, well lets just say the more the better. I increased my Cable to 6mb\768k so no problems here my friend.

So, with that said I think if Vonage support is poor then this puts them even with the other providers. This also makes them more expensive because other providers charge less ($9 a month less). So why stay with Vonage.

Once I get a Voip provider it will be a lot easier to move between them because I will not have to worry about my Line being active, as I do now! Two phones, one with no features that everyone knows (primary number) and the other with all the features that no one knows (virtual number).

I hope you didn't jump ship yet. I'm surprised that you've had poor support from Vonage. My experiences have been very good, and I think if you give them a chance that you'll find this service to be very good. Other provides don't offer the same amount of features, and I don't see how switching will change your difficulty with your bandwidth. I had a similar bandwidth problem, and calling Vonage to have them change the codec in my router from G.726 to G.729 helped - it uses less bandwidth and my call consistency has greatly improved. You should adjust your settings first to see if the phone call quality and/or consistency is better.I don't surf the net too much when I'm on the phone. That's life, and I'm O.K. with that. If I did, the call quality would be worse. If you need to use the internet so often that you can't get a phone call in as the only activity on the line, then maybe Voip isn't for you. But again, you should have enough bandwidth for great call quality - I just don't recommend on-line gaming or significant downloading/uploading when you're calling, but that's just me.

I have been trying Voip for one month now, and Vonage has been a great service.

Good luck to you.

_________________"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else."- Benjamin Franklin

Sorry for losing a couple or all of you. This was type in the heat of the moment and I was rambling to friends about it. I would love to try the product as a whole (calls in and out like a normal phone system), but I can't since my number hasn't been ported over yet. My complaint is that Vonage hasn't take any approach, in my opinion, to help me or provide me with some status without me calling every week for the last 3 weeks. How many times do I have to hear, I'll open a ticket to check on that ticket for you. It would be nice to get an email or phone call giving me some type of status. You know, make me feel warm and cosy! Right now I feel scared and in a dark place....what was that? Who's there? Ahhhhhhh....

My speed and quality are fine. I have 6mb/768k so I would expect it to be. I haven't given up hope yet. I know it will port over someday. I have the Linksys R320 on my network setup with a regular phone for making long distance calls. So I can use the system for outgoing calls. So far it's been fair.

I can see where you're coming from Sep. I had a very frustrating experience with Vonage when I was trying to get our number transferred as well. On the transfer status page it shows that they received my LOA on May 2nd and the transfer was complete on July 27th, almost three months!! Over that duration I talked to customer support about 4 or 5 times and although they were polite, I don't think they were of any help. They would just put in a request for an updated status, and then I'd get an e-mail saying the person in charge of my transfer was going to look into it and get back to me as soon as possible.

Week after week I never received any follow up on the status, but then it finally transferred over, and I was lucky enough (after complaining) to be able to get them to credit me for the months that I did not have their service. Also, I have a 5mbps (640KB/sec) download and a 384 kbps (48KB/sec) upload and the Vonage adapter seems to manage my bandwidth good, because I am able to talk on the phone, have teamspeak open, etc, and play games like Counter-Strike with pings as low as 25.

Anyway, hopefully they will work out the number transfer for you. Good luck.... (I wish I could upload as fast as you )

Number transfers seem to be hit-or-miss as far as length goes... I think we'll all agree that transfers seem to take forever though.

I'm still waiting myself for a number to be ported from Cingular:July 22, 2005 Awaiting Letter of Authorization July 22, 2005 Letter of Authorization (LOA) Received July 23, 2005 Transfer Sent to Carrier

August 8th is when I signed up my first line and just this week I ordered my 2nd line.

I have faith that Vonage will be able to port my 2 numbers in a resonable amount of time.....

As for quality of service, since Aug 8th, I've logged over 280 minutes and have had only one call be dropped. I have had excellent call quality the whole time.

You can't really knock Vonage for bandwidth ~ 90k for high quality voice is not too bad. I can have 2 voice lines going and my daughter kickin' butt at Halo2 on *my* Xbox Live + our 4 other computers on with no voice problems.

My opinion on the number porting problem is that there is some kind of issue between Vonage and the 3rd party that actually does the porting.